


3KK: How the others see us (an outsider's edition)

by Madoshi



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alpha!Lance, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Family Fluff, Humor, M/M, Omega!Keith, Original Character(s), POV Outsider, based on another fic, some ABO-typical social issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-29 14:36:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19832248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madoshi/pseuds/Madoshi
Summary: Keith's and Lance's unconventional family, as seen by normal people.NOTE: The story is set in crumbcake's universe (Three kids klance) — with her gracious permission.





	1. A Merchantess of Venice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crumbcake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crumbcake/gifts).
  * Inspired by [3KK-01: The Three Times Lance Found Out That Keith Was Pregnant](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12332583) by [crumbcake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crumbcake/pseuds/crumbcake). 



> OK, so I fell in love with Crumbcake's 3KK world and there were some scenes floating in my head which I just coudln't get rid of. So, couple of days ago in the moment of procrastination this happened.  
> Crumbcake incredibly graciously allowed me into her playpen and gave me some pointers on the characters and the world. She even betaed the stories which they needed desperately (I'm not a native speaker and I don't live in an English speaking country; all the remaining mistakes are mine, you know the drill).
> 
> If you're not familiar with 3KK, it's still should be OK to read (that is, if you are interested in such unabashed family fluff); that's just a little self-indulgent fanwork about what cool parents Lance and Keith would be. The only thing you need to know is that it's a semi-canon-compliant omegaverse world where Keith and Lance live on Earth with their kids (Clara, Shiro and Saul) after the war, and where humankind is still mostly unaware of aliens.
> 
> If you are familiar with 3KK, please bear in mind that this work may (and almost certainly will) contradict future "canonic" installments of this universe, both in relations to events of characters' lives and their voices. I'm not crumbcakes' co-author, I'm just a very avid reader :D

It was fifteen minutes to performance, and Shiro disappeared to god knows where. Again.

Now, Rosa held a firm belief that everybody should be allowed to dig their own grave. She was not going to save Shiro (again) when he would inevitably be late with another of his home assignments. But for this show they worked their asses off, and she would be damned if she’d allow this stupid boy get stuck daydreaming in a quiet corner somewhere, or chattering with cute cheerleaders, or bleeding to death while trying to cover the wound with a piece of ductape after he cut himself with a plastic spoon.

To be fair, she liked Shiro. A lot. Not in a way a beta could like an omega; at her respectable age of sixteen she was also of the firm belief that any sensible beta should try to avoid this alpha-omega drama if at all possible (though Shiro did smell nice). But he was a good friend. He was even generally reliable, but seemed to be still learning to control his giant personality which sometimes got all over the place, cue the frequent tardiness.

So, this time — and only this time, mind you! — she went looking for him.

Everybody was busy preparing for the event, the smells were hopelessly tangled and oftentimes unpleasantly sour from stress, but Shiro always smelled particularly strong, so she didn’t have any trouble following him to an empty science classroom. She figured Shiro was probably having a freak out there, never mind he always insisted the leading role was made for him.

But… something was wrong.

Rosa had quite a good sense of smell for a beta, so she realized even as she was approaching that Shiro was not alone. And that the other person in the room with him was an alpha. Not one of the teachers: there was just a handful of alphas in the whole faculty and she knew the smells for all of them. Not another teenager, either: the smell was strong, settled. Definitely an adult.

Somewhere in Rosa’s head, a warning bell went off. Besides, Shiro’s scent was a bit off. She wasn’t sure why or how much, it didn’t smell like he thought he was in danger… yet. But Shiro was too trusting for his own good, and he still seemed at least mildly irritated, so she definitely needed to assess the situation before acting.

She tiptoed to the half-opened door and carefully peeked in.

First she thought something sexual was going on, and her heart skipped a bit; then she realized it was not the case and relaxed. A moment later she realized something else and relaxed even further — but immediately tensed again for an entirely different reason. 

She saw Shiro sitting on a desk with his back to the door, his feet dangling above the floor and his head thrown back. The alpha was standing in front of him, sideways to her, leaning down a little. Despite the suggestive pose they were not kissing. The alpha — broad shouldered, tanned, gorgeous alpha — was applying something to Shiro’s face. He was entirely engrossed in his work, with the tip of his tongue peeking between his lips.

The second thing that she realized was that the alpha and Shiro were definitely related. They did not look identical but very, very much alike. Same brow, same chin. Shiro probably could become that attractive in ten or so years if he stopped pouting and whining and grimacing all the time. Rosa realized this had to be his alpha sibling. She remembered he had one, but she had been sure he mentioned a sister… 

And she also noticed that the alpha’s smell was not only strong and settled but also really deep with hints of dangerous. Like an ocean before the storm… or something. That was probably too poetic a comparison for a dude she just saw for the first time, wasn’t it? And she had always thought she was going to stay away from this Alpha-Omega nonsense… Oh well. If that nonsense looked like that… 

(A more sensible part of her mind which was usually at the helm reminded her that Shiro’s sibling really was nine or ten years older and therefore too old for her, and that he was probably taken — maybe that’s why Shiro mentioned a sister. But all the other parts were too busy blushing and imagining the alpha’s smile to listen).

When the alpha pulled back, Rosa saw that his face was crossed with a thin white scar that was almost surgical in its precision. Huh. She remembered Shiro mentioned something about races. Definitely dangerous then.

“OK, now those are smoky eyes that don’t disgrace our family!” concluded the alpha with visible satisfaction, recapping the eyeliner. So he was indeed applying the makeup. A pretty unusual skill for a male alpha. Rosa thought she was a little in love already.

He handed Shiro a small mirror.

“Uh,” her classmate whined. “I look silly! Too omega-ish!”

“Well, you do have a pretty face,” said the alpha. “Although in my opinion, I wear it better”.

Shiro groaned as if he rolled his eyes.

“But that’s the whole point of the play, isn’t it?” the alpha continued, unperturbed. “In the first part Bassanio is just a young wealthy omega whose hand in marriage is sought by mighty and powerful alphas, that silly Portia among them. He is supposed to look gentle and fragile. Then in the second act you masquerade as a shrewd beta lawyer, rescue Portia’s ex, and kick everybody’s asses while you’re at it. The makeup would be a good visual cue that you tried to cover your scent. You wipe the makeup off — and boom, you’re a new person!”

Shiro groaned again. “I just don’t like eyeliner! Mom doesn’t wear it, why should I?”

“Ok, we can wipe it off,'' the alpha shrugged. “But I remind you, and I quote, ‘people would think I’m a loser who can’t figure out my own stage makeup’. Your words, not mine, m’ijo”.

M’ijo?

Then the alpha smirked.

“Though some of them have probably figured it out by now. There is a girl in a medieval costume hiding behind the door. She’s been listening for about a minute now”.

“What?” Shiro turned around, eyes wide in alarm. Wow, his smoky eye make-up was flawlessly executed, if incredibly over dramatic.“Rosa!” the omega squeaked. “You saw nothing!”

Rosa had no choice but to step into the classroom.

“Hi,” she said to the alpha, ignoring her friend. “I’m Rosa, I’m playing Antonia. I was not eavesdropping, just looking for Shiro. We are starting in ten minutes and he needs to be there”.

“Hi, I’m Shiro’s father, Lance Alvarez,” he smiled, incredibly charmingly, as her traitorous mind supplied. “Looking forward to seeing you on stage. That’s actually my favourite…”

“Oh my gosh, it’s ten minutes already!” Shiro shrieked, loudly and unnaturally as he jumped off the desk, “We need to go! Hurry, Rosa!” He grabbed Rosa’s hand and sped away from the classroom down the corridor, yelling, ”See you after the show, papi!”

“That was your dad?” Rosa was feeling beyond gobsmacked. “He… he is so young!” And not in that artificial way of some celebrities who looked like they were preserved in a brine at age twenty five and had slowly been turning into pickles ever since. Either Shiro’s older sibling was adopted, or his family had some seriously unfair genetic advantages. 

“No way!” Shiro pouted. “He is practically senile! And he tries to make friends with all my friends. Who does that? I don’t want him to do that, he is so embarrassing!”

Rosa would probably be embarrassed too if she saw her own face the next moment, when she said dreamily: “He seems cool though. Is he a racer, like your older sister?”

“Nah, he is a boring-ass instructor at the Garrison. And Clara doesn’t race much anymore, she’s just meh now cause she’s old and annoying.”

“So he is a pilot, then? Is this... “ she gestured at her cheek purposefully as she trailed off, wondering if it was even appropriate to ask, but Shiro was a loudmouth with no personal borders to speak of, so she went on. “Is the scar on his face from a crash?”

“Kind of? I think he was deployed somewhere right about the time I was born, and then everything blew up, and then he was in a coma or something for a year.” He shrugged. “I don’t really remember, and nobody likes to talk about it.”

“So he _is_ cool,” Rosa said with a sinking feeling. She didn’t need a stupid teenage crush on a parent of a classmate! Not in a million years!

“He is so not,” Shiro snorted. “My mom is million times cooler. _He_ doesn’t try to control every little thing I do! And he doesn’t care about my friends, and grades, and assignments! And he tests jets for a living, and flies to Hanimed and Mars like every other week, and I’m pretty sure he is secretly a spy, but I’m not supposed to tell you that, so let’s pretend I didn’t!”

Rosa’s imagination was quick to conjure an image of a busy distant beta who is never home and prioritizes his career over his kids and mate so much that Shiro has resorted to imagining him as a Bond-like character. Maybe… just maybe… she has a sliver of a chance…

‘Nope’, she said to herself. ‘Bad girl. Drop it. Now! This is stupid and dangerous!’ 

Alas, in her head she was already five years older and having a Very Awkward Conversation with Shiro about how she was going to be his step-mom from now on, and dealing with the repercussions of having a whole hostile family turned against her love, and…

She sighed. She knew it was not going to happen, and that she was destined to a broken heart, the same as the character she was playing. Safe in the end, but forever alone. Maybe she shouldn’t have agreed to this role after all...


	2. A ghost hunt

By early afternoon, the sun’s scorching heat waned just enough for the outdoors to be marginally bearable. Still, Enrique was not looking forward to the steep mountain hike that lay ahead. There was a _much_ simpler way to get to the witch’s hut; they could take the bus and then make their way along the ridge on foot, no climbing necessary. But the bus driver would probably find it suspicious that primary school kids were riding a bus to the mountains without adult supervision and might even call the police. So a winding secret trail it was. Enrique couldn’t back down now. He was an alpha after all, even if only ten years old.

“I say we start going up now,'' said Val. “Or we won’t be able to get back before dark. Do you want to climb down through all those rocks at night? I don’t.”

She pointed out that their parents would probably catch on that they were not at their afterschool activities. Well, unless you count hunting a witch’s ghost an extracurricular course, which Saul said totally counted. Speaking of Saul…

“We can’t go without him,” said Enrique.

“Why not? He is a little mama’s omega after all. He probably got cold feet and wussed out.”

“Now that was sexist,” protested Carlos.

“Not if I’m an omega too,” countered Val. “But maybe I’m not since I don’t wear puffed-out skirts and sparkling shoes to school!”

Val’s parents dressed her in sharp respectable sundresses, which she would discard as soon as she reached the schoolyard, and then spend the rest of the day in shorts and bare chested, like most of the alpha and beta and even male omega kids in the school. Yet she carried herself like she was a cut above the rest. She had an attitude that was fit for several royal mantles. 

Enrique happened to know that her parents made her wear a wristband with a tracking beacon which, earlier, she convinced her classmate of similar height to wear so that she could join their little adventure. 

“That is actually more sexist,” insisted Carlos, adjusting his glasses. “But whatever. I think you’re right that we can’t wait anymore if we want to be back in time.”

“Guys,” said Enrique. “We really can’t go without Saul!”

“Ahhh, little alpha is in love already!” Val’s lips curled into an evil grin. 

Enrique felt his cheeks heat up. “Am not!” he argued, hotly. “It’s just that it was Saul’s idea, and he’s the only one who knows the way!”

“His idea?” Val snorted, surprised and irritated. “Great! You couldn’t ask him to show you that trail on a map? You know, so that we wouldn’t be stuck here waiting for a wuss?”

Enrique knew that Val, as an omega, was on a much shorter leash than he or Carlos, who was a beta. She risked a whole lot more than them if they were caught. He and Carlos would probably be left without dessert or something, maybe Enrique’s game streams would be taken away (he didn’t know if Carlos’s parents could threaten him with gaming restrictions; he was a huge nerd, he preferred reading books — big boring tomes — on physical paper and not once complained that they were heavy). On the other hand, Val might end up in major trouble and would probably be grounded for a month.

Enrique felt almost guilty about it. Almost. It was hard to feel bad for Val since she behaved like a fire-spitting rattlesnake.

He liked Saul much more. And not because he was prettier but because Saul would never act that way!

But Saul liked Val for whatever reason (maybe it was an omega solidarity thing, though Val never expressed any), and had insisted that he and Carlos invite her to join them on their adventure. So they did.

Just as he opened his mouth to tell Val off, he heard the sound of an engine running nearby.

“A hover is coming our way!” said Carlos. “Hide! Not here, you morons, they’ll see us!”

They hid between a boulder and some type of spindly bush that Enrique couldn’t identify (he was a future explorer and ghost hunter, not a botanist!), and found out too late that the bush had thorns. Ow. Ow. On the other hand, maybe he could use to learn some botany…

Anyway, they held as still as possible, as an unknown hover climbed up a narrow and winding gravel road. Enrique was really surprised a car could travel that high up. Maybe some fancy flyer model?

Then he heard the sound of a door swing open and slam shut, then some footsteps followed by distant chatter. The hover was too far away to make out the words, but it sounded like English mixed with Spanish. One of the voices was distinctly too high and too cheerful.

They heard quick footsteps against the brush and the sound of a motor moving away. The hover was leaving.

Several moments later a cheerful, pink-faced Saul appeared after making the last turn on the trail. He was wearing a small backpack which was definitely not his school bag since it didn’t have any sequins on it, and held another bag in his hands.

“Hi, guys!” he puffed, breathlessly. “Sorry I’m late! But look, I brought you some tech! And also some snacks my dad made.”

“What tech?” asked Carlos, leaving their makeshift hideout first. 

“Look!” said Saul eagerly. He rifled through the bag he was carrying and took out three bracelets. Enrique noticed that he had an identical one on his wrist. “This thing is a watch, and EMP scanner so that we could really find a ghost and not just wander around the hut, and an IR scanner in case there are some animals nearby. It can also see snakes in the grass! And it has a holoprojector and databank, which I updated with our map in case our ghosthunting takes longer than expected.”

“Cool!” Enrique took the bracelet. “Hey, that’s an Explorer-76, I’ve seen the commercials! How did you get it? It looks like an army model but it isn’t...”

“Well, my sister knows a guy who develops them for the Garrison, and she said he wants to make a civilian model, so she asked mami and papi to evaluate some,” Saul said proudly. “I told them about our expedition, and papi said it was a great opportunity to try these out so mami programmed them with little beacons, and…”

“Hey!” Val, who was reaching for one of the bracelets, jerked her hand back. “There is a beacon?! And your parents know where we’re going?!”

“Yes, of course!” Saul’s big eyes were wide with naive surprise. “How else would I get permission to go into the mountains with you guys? Plus they gave me these cool gadgets and a car ride all the way to the trail!”

Enrique couldn’t believe his ears. Saul was the most omega-ish omega he knew; he even got a custom sparkly stylus for his pad! And he used colored and flavoured chapstick, because, as he said, lipstick was only cool after you were twelve. Granted, he also liked ghosts and his eyes lit up at horror stories and he once fought the Gruesome Trio when they bullied one of their classmates in his presence, but it still was mind-boggling that his parents would let him hike a mountain just like that! 

Enrique knew that Saul’s parents were not the young and progressive type; his father was in the army, he once saw him in uniform. And he had two much older siblings, which meant his folks were at least fifty since you have to be thirty to start having kids. 

“I can’t believe it!” Val growled. “You just… told your parents? Just like that? They could rat us out!”

“They wouldn’t!” Saul protested. “I trust them! If they thought it was too dangerous, they’d probably take you back to school, but they wouldn’t say anything to _your_ parents!”

Enrique and Carlos looked at each other. They both heard Saul’s emphasis. Val’s constant fighting with her parents wasn’t a secret to anybody in the neighbourhood, and Enrique knew that most adults were more on Val’s side. Even his own mom once said that if he had an omega child he wouldn’t be so strict with them, and that any child needed to go through a “spirited” phase.

“Well, your parents must be the best,” said Val with deep sarcasm. “What, are they so fed up with your cutesy fashion sense that they thought some dangerous adventure might make it better?”

“They _are_ the best!” Saul beamed. “And you know, actually, that’s almost what mami said! Although my fashion sense is much better than his. He wears only black and red with occasional gray when he borrows something from papi.” His nose wrinkled as if he were reliving an unpleasant memory. “It’s unfortunate, as my uncle Lo… one of my uncles say.”

Enrique felt his mouth opening and forcefully put his jaw in its rightful place. He never heard of an omega child given so much freedom. Even he, an alpha, had to fight tooth and nail to be allowed anything interesting ever.

“Are you guys from another planet or what?” asked Carlos, who, apparently, had the same thoughts.

“Actually, yes,” Saul nodded happily. “My parents were space knights, they had these giant metal robot cats,” His arms shot out in a wide gesture. “And they fought the great war in the neighbouring sector of our galaxy. And my mom is half-alien, so I’m a quarter alien. And I can talk about it now because mami is tired with the big government cover up, so he said it was OK to tell anybody if I feel like it,” he shrugged. “And papi just went along with it, because mami is the leader and always calls the shots.”

Baited silence followed. Then Carlos said.

“You know what? I saw your mom. I almost believe you.”

“Only magical space knights who are half-alien would treat their omega son that way,” Val agreed wistfully. And Enrique caught himself nodding.

“Cool! Then how about we go to the witch’s hut?” asked Saul. “It’s getting dark in four hours, we gotta hurry.”

And so they went.

**Author's Note:**

> In case somebody wondered, yes, "The Merchant of Venice" would look a little differently in this world. As would "Twelfth night", I imagine :D
> 
> There will be one more installment, about Saul's friends :)


End file.
